RAY: Hi! We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair and, uh, the answer to last week's historic and folkloric Puzzler, and here it is.
TOM: And I still don't know what it is, historic and folkloric.
RAY: Well, this Puzzler just happened to have come from my vast pile of Puzzler suggestions, which I am slowly working through. The date on this one is December 31, '94. And it came from Benjamin Schultz, who I think was a high school student when he sent me this. He's probably married with kids and driving a minivan now, but who knows?
TOM: We'll hear from him.
RAY: I hope. Here it is. At the beginning of the First World War, the uniform of the British soldiers included a brown cloth cap.
TOM: Ah, yes.
RAY: They had not yet discovered the advantages of metal helmets. But, as the war went on, the War Office became alarmed at the high proportion of men suffering head injuries. They therefore decided to replace the cloth cap with metal helmets. Duh!
TOM: Well, it's military intelligence, and you know what that is.
RAY: Yeah. An oxymoron. From then on, all soldiers wore the metal helmets. However--and this is the puzzling part--the War Office was amazed to discover that there were more soldiers hospitalized with head injuries than ever before. Now, it can be assumed that the intensity of fighting was the same before and after the metal helmets...
TOM: The introduction of the...yeah.
RAY: Were introduced. So, why should the recorded number of head injuries per battalion increase when the men were wearing metal helmets rather than cloth helmets?
TOM: Mmm. And I know the answer, too.
RAY: Well, it's just an example of how statistics can lie to people.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And have people crying out, "I knew we shouldn't have been using those damn helmets."
TOM: Right. Get rid of those helmets!
RAY: And the reason is rather simple. Before the helmets, anyone that got hit with a piece of shrapnel and wearing a cloth helmet...
TOM: Did not have any injuries.
RAY: No. He was...
TOM: He was dead.
RAY: He was a goner. At least with the helmets, people got a chance to survive and become part of the statistic...
TOM: Of injury.
RAY: Of injuries, exactly.
TOM: Better to be a statistic injury...an injury statistic than not at all.
RAY: A death statistic.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And that's exactly it.
TOM: Wow, man!
RAY: In fact, without the helmets, they had many more fatalities, and with the helmets, they had fewer fatalities, but more injuries.
TOM: And you don't think you're going to catch flak on this one?
RAY: Not me. Benjamin Schultz is going to take it, and I hope he shows up. That little note could...I thought we were going to hear from him, but now I know we're not going to hear from him. He's going to be out in Laramie, Wyoming.
TOM: Oh, he probably mailed a letter yesterday, because he heard the Puzzler...he heard his name mentioned last week, and sent a...and now he's at the post office trying to get the letter back.
RAY: Well, I thought it was pretty good. Otherwise, I wouldn't have used it.
TOM: I love it.
RAY: I'm with you, Ben. We'll take the heat together.
TOM: I love it because it's so obfuscated.
RAY: And twisted.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: Yeah.
TOM: And we have a winner.
RAY: I'm sure.
TOM: The winner is Marilyn Murphy from Chattanooga, Tennessee. And for having her answer selected at random from among...
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
